Columns

Gov. Jerry Brown has declared that opposition to efforts to reduce carbon emissions “borders on the immoral.” Hesitate though we might to debate Brown, a former Jesuit seminarian, on the nature of divine law, we have to question the “morality” of forcing working California motorists to bear the brunt of the cost of regulations required by Brown’s convictions.

I interviewed the founder of the Altadena Bug Club Monday afternoon, and I’m afraid that it wasn’t but a few minutes into our confab before I had gone native, throwing journalistic integrity to the wind.

As gung-ho “experts” press President Obama to do this, that or the other in the Middle East, keep a simple rule in mind: Whatever the avid interventionists suggest probably won’t work — and surely will have unintended consequences.

“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink…” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798, in “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” The reality confronting millions of Californians as they cope with yet another lengthy episode in a seemingly endless series of droughts is that — like Coleridge’s mariner — this state has billions of acre-feet of water clearly visible every day in the form of the Pacific Ocean and its many bays and estuaries.

More than 30 budget bills were passed by the California Legislature Monday, even though they were blank. The only thing written on each of the bills was its number and a statement that the Legislature intends to fill it in later.

Does it matter that “Whistler’s Mother” is hanging on an L.A. museum wall for the first time in 82 years? Well, when I pulled into the Norton Simon Wednesday for my own appointed visitation with the old biddy, the KNBC and KABC news trucks were in the lot.

Hundreds of police and sheriff’s departments across the country are either testing or adopting body-worn video cameras for their officers. Is this a rare issue where left and right can agree? Unions mustn’t prevail Body cameras are no panacea.

Prudent people never discuss politics or religion in a bar or as a guest at somebody else’s dinner table. This week’s events on the national and California political scenes provide object lessons in why that’s so.

By Tammi Rossman-Benjamin What is the campus climate like for Jewish students at the University of California? As the old Jewish joke goes: in one word, good; in two words, not good. Let’s start with the good.

“It’s no use saying we are doing our best. You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.” — Winston Churchill Given the chilling impact of the locked-in Draconian cuts to the Department of Defense’s budget, doing what is necessary to preserve and strengthen California’s military readiness and related jobs calls for quick action, as Congress deliberates the 2016 budget.

Sometimes it can take more than a decade for a completely sensible idea to catch on. So it is with what may be the single best money-saving idea in last year’s state budget, one that is just now beginning fully to take hold.

I’ve been an Airbnb host for three years now in South Los Angeles and want to address a recent study by the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy claiming that Airbnb is responsible for taking more than 7,000 units off of the housing market.

Dear President Xi Jinping, This is a thank-you note from California. First, thank you for sustaining our neighborhoods through the housing crisis. Thank you for keeping wealthy Chinese so nervous about your purges of political opponents — oops, I mean your anti-corruption campaigns — that they are buying real estate all over California.

Los Angeles’ economy is on the up-and-up, but that won’t last if only a few of its residents are reaping the benefits. The future of our city depends largely on our ability to ensure that all Angelenos rise with it.

What is it that Pasadena mayoral candidates raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for, and by-district City Council candidates tens of thousands? Not, sadly, get-out-the-vote cocktail parties catered by The Kitchen for Exploring Foods.

With the decision of Prime Healthcare, citing conditions set by Attorney General Kamala Harris, to pull its proposed acquisition of six Los Angeles and Bay Area hospitals facing potential closure, it is time to reconsider how all California hospitals operate.

By Dan Walters Gov. Pat Brown, when asked a half-century ago when he would declare his intention to run for re-election, famously replied “when the snow flies in the Sierra.” His son, Jerry, jokingly used the same phrase five-plus years ago when reporters pressed him about seeking the governorship again after a 28-year absence.

It was supposed to be a $5 billion project, creating 6,500 jobs. That was the hype when Tesla Motors last summer orchestrated a five-state battle to host a huge “gigafactory” where it plans to build batteries for its next generation of electric cars.

I knew my neighbor Curtis Autenrieth was a football guy from the first time I met him. Well — first time I met him in person, at least. Because we were talking about the Rose Bowl, and he mentioned that he had played Division 1 college football himself.

A bipartisan trio of U.S. senators, including New Jersey’s Cory Booker, New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand and Kentucky’s Rand Paul, are sponsoring a bill to classify marijuana as a Schedule II drug, meaning the federal government would allow it be used as medicine.

It can be informative, sometimes sobering, to catch a glimpse of ourselves as others see us. That’s certainly the case with the current Economist’s persuasively clear-eyed and overwhelmingly positive 16-page appraisal of America’s 57 million Latino immigrants, the overwhelming majority of them — 48 million — legally residents.

For years, government policy makers and think tanks have tried to close the digital divide that leaves more than 20 percent of Californians — disproportionately African-American and Hispanic — in a digital lurch.

Leaders from across the political spectrum — from Jeb Bush to President Obama — have been talking about the dangers of the growing gaps between the haves and have-nots in our country. Yet there are others who continue to chip away at what remains of our nation’s shrinking middle class, rather than engaging in a serious, thoughtful discussion about the problems facing the future of our state, our country and our economy.

When the California State Board of Education voted last week to once again delay holding schools accountable for their students’ performance on new Common Core-aligned assessments, they had one thing right: Schools still haven’t effectively transitioned to the new standards and are not prepared to help all children meet them.

If the Guinness Book of World Records has a category for it, this will be the year the Affordable Care Act breaks the world record for unintended consequences. It’s the first year the IRS has tried to enforce the penalty provisions and the rest of the tax consequences of the law known as Obamacare.

Did we win in Bell? There is no greater symbol of local California corruption than Bell, a city of 35,000 people and 2½ square miles in southeast L.A. County. For years, Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo and other officials exploited every dark corner of California’s convoluted systems of local governance and finance.

By Dan Walters California’s unfortunate evolution into a society of haves and have-nots has many root causes, but a highly distorted housing market looms very large. We have the nation’s second highest home prices (only Hawaii is higher) and, not surprisingly, its third lowest level of homeownership.

Sometimes, when an election is over, a person — or even a newspaper editor and columnist — is glad it’s in the rear-view mirror, and that it’s time for moving on. But other times, particularly if there has been a wide-open, multi-candidate primary election, and since no one took a majority of votes, there will be a run-off — well, other times a second election between just two candidates can bring some new focus to the politics.

Voter turnout in California is low. Just three weeks ago, the election held in Los Angeles saw an embarrassing 10 percent turnout. And, of course, the statewide turnout just last November was almost as bad.

By Dan Walters Do as we say, not as we do. Over the decades, the California Legislature has passed numerous “sunshine laws” to bolster government transparency. The laws — open meetings of government agencies, open records, competitive contract bidding, etc.

By Bret Lane If we’re to believe Susan Shelley’s commentary “We don’t need utilities, cars monitoring our behavior” (Perspectives, March 15), California state agencies and SoCalGas are using automated meters to spy on customers and share details about their lives.

It’s now possible that mid-February will be remembered for years to come as a fateful time in the century-long history of the California Public Utilities Commission. That’s when, without offering any legal justification, the five commissioners spent public money to hire a criminal lawyer.

Like hard-working Americans everywhere, members of the Communications Workers of America and the California Nurses Association care about building a strong and just economy, featuring quality jobs at living wages with safe working conditions.

A defendant recently arrested for commercial burglary had an extensive felony criminal record including three grand thefts, two car thefts, four burglaries, as well as criminal threat. In the past he would have been charged with a felony.

Just short years ago, many Americans were congratulating each other on the country’s transformation into a “post-racial” society. Race hatred, the original sin that stained our nation’s soul at its conception and, through all the centuries since, repeatedly has mocked our democracy’s highest aspirations for itself, supposedly had given way to a new dispensation of sunny tolerance.